Posted by Ann McDowell
a resident of Danville
on Mar 5, 2013 at 8:06 am

The three "opportunity sites" that we're removed can be added back into the mix in future--yes there are future---development ( very LOW income) panels. I wholeheartedly support a recall starting with Lynn whose distaste for speakers who were against this stupid gov plan was palatable.

Not all of us voted for what we have. They are our elected officials and should listen to the people they serve. I know this may sound pollyanish but that is the way we all hoped it would work. We shall see once the meetings and voices are heard. In the meantime, we have developments that are going to move forward and change Danville anyway - downtown Danville Hotel that looks like it has stalled - but once built will add traffic and more congestion to downtown and the new KB project off of San Ramon Valley Blvd. We cannot trust pro-density officials who are captivated by developers to change.

Corte Madera got out of ABAG and the MTC by voting to no longer pay dues and be told by unelected officials that have as their goal some urban utopia known as "One Bay Area". If this idea doesn't sound like something you want to be part of begin to demand that Danville get out of ABAG, the MTC and any other groups with lofty ideas of "One Bay Area".

Ask residents of San Ramon how they like what low income housing has done to their community and property values. Gang activity is rampent in San Ramon.
Time for a recall and to get out of ABAG. Most developers who are proponents of low income housing don't live in communities where they have low income housing so they aren't affected by the fallout.

I am embarrassed by many of my fellow Danville residents. They are elitist and narrow minded. We have a responsibility to offer a modest amount of affordable housing as part of being a good citizen. I have worked on many affordable housing sites such as Habitat for Humanity and other low income senior housing and it is nice, well managed property.

If you can't afford to live here that's just the way it is. The idea of we owe people something because they can't afford it is ridiculous. This forced socialism makes me sick! So what about if they can't afford to have a new BMW like many of the residents have. Do we need to make available to them too? I would like to live in Diablo and some other neighborhoods but the prices are not within my reach. So I do without until I can make it happen. LIFE!!!

Posted by Conservator
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 7:47 am

Interesting...Is it 'forced socialism' if I or you own that piece of terra firma that is intended for redevelopment and want to sell it or lease it to another for significant profit but are prevented by intervening regulations or community rejection? Is that not impeding that core fundamental of free-market capitalism?

I was at that meeting. I didn't hear them say they would withdraw from ABAG, though the majority in attendance are against ABAG, myself included. I didn't vote for the Council we got either. But they are still elected to represent all the residents. I encourage everyone with an interest in this (not you, Julia) to send emails to the Council and anyone else you can think of. The emails are part of the record.

Posted by JUST THE FACTS
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 10:07 am

@Conservator: You are misunderstanding the process.

Under the proposed General Plan, up to 35 acres of land in Danville may be REDESIGNATED for med./high density housing to satisfy ABAG (with its wildly inflated growth estimates). The properties involved are largely designated for commercial and office use so that we have a downtown! The Town would not be doing that redesignating EXCEPT FOR ABAG! ABAG is taking away our local control for land use planning, plain and simple. This is not the free market interacting with local land use control that is driving this.

Were you at the meeting on Tuesday? Did you hear the dentist who, because the parcel where is office is located is proposed for redesignation, is being forced out by the landlord who will only offer him a 3 months lease? He finally found other Danville office space but said the cost of all this to him hovers around $200,000!

Oh, and if you had been there you would have heard the attorney representing the owner of Darby Plaza located at the corner of El Cerro and El Pintado. Darby is off the redesignation list FOR NOW (could be put on again at any time) and the owner WANTS IT TO BE PUT BACK ON! Why? He says he wants to build upscale condos!! Hmmm, wait a minute ---I thought the redesignation was just to help build affordable housing.... sounds like a real developer feeding frenzy to me.

Oh, and where was the environmental review for all the redesignations? The EIR for the GP was woefully short on any of that. And when specific projects are actually being reviewed, there is a potential for avoidance of environmental reviews. Nice profits to the developer and unmitigated traffic for the rest of us!

Don't speak until you educate yourself, Conservator. The Town and ABAG are hoping you stay in the dark yet keep up trying to convince people the Town and ABAG are right using your limited knowledge and ABAG rhetoric.

It is truly laughable how dumb the Town thinks we are. They keep putting puppets like Candace Andersen up to tell us that if "affordable", i.e. low-income, housing is built only our own kids plus firefighters (they actually think we don't know that firefighters can afford to live here NOW), nurses (have you seen the salary schedules for Kaiser and Sutter Health?)and teachers (again, with two incomes, teachers can well afford to live here) will move in. Sorry, Candace,but deed restrictions to reserve the houses for those categories of people are ILLEGAL. You should know that; you are a lawyer. Thanks for letting us know you are a shill for ABAG. We won't vote for you again!

Come to the next Town COuncil hearing: TUESDAY, MARCH 19TH, 7:30,DANVILLE COMMUNITY CENTER. PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN CHAIR!

Steve, you have more to be embarrassed about than you realize. The posters here are not merely elitist, they are ignorant. Danville has dealt with these same laws which forbid a municipality's attempt to prevent all possibility of the construction of low income housing **for many years.** This is not new. The result of that compliance is the senior and disabled housing projects on Hartz and Laurel, which are an asset to the community. Where's the "ghetto?" Where's the rampant crime wave arising from these **actual products** of the city's compliance with this law?

Campagnolo, the regulations in question simply allow a private property owner to build out his property as he sees fit, without prohibiting the construction of certain kinds of housing. You're the one who supports having the government make that illegal. Who's the "socialist" here?

In sum, Steve, the people who howl and whine about the city government complying with state law aren't just elitist and small minded, they're arrogant, ignorant, socialist thugs.

Posted by Geoff Gillette
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 11:55 amGeoff Gillette is a registered user.

Good afternoon,

Thanks for the comments. We are glad to have feedback from our residents. I wanted to take a moment and clarify something that is mentioned in the story.

The article stated (it has been corrected now) that Town Manager Joe Calabrigo said Danville will be getting out of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). That is not the case. The direction staff received from the Town Council was to remove any information related to ABAG from the draft 2030 General Plan Update. Any decision related to the Town’s membership in ABAG is a separate issue unrelated to the ongoing discussion of the 2030 General Plan.

Danville Express Editor Jessica Lipsky has posted a correction regarding this error in the original story.

Posted by Conservator
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 1:32 pm

@JUSTAFACTOGRAM

Ease off throttle young man... It's pretty clear that by the time you rolled into that last 'substantive' paragraph, you must have had blood in your eyes and a lactic acid 'burn' in the fingers.

If perhaps my understanding of the process throughout is as grounded in naiveté as you suggest, then I'll not argue those semantics. Before you allowed your thoughts to ramble, you were actually some rationale points with anecdotal but nevertheless reasonable examples of what change might induce - the good and the bad (a Daoist outcome for sure).

My question to you is that you seem to be reticent to afford a landowner an opportunity to turn a profit (fair or not) on their respective property. Based on your emotionally charged prose, I tend to suspect that you must be a proven capitalist like the rest of us. I surely hope that you've been smiling as much as I have given the Street's performance at late. If all of this gross PRESUMPTION is correct, then surely you must be for the guy or gal looking to make a profit. That is the cornerstone (i.e. PROFIT) that got us into this town and is likely to keep us here.

BTW, if you must paraphrase the common bemoaning banter, you neglected to list police officers, public utility workers and all other unionized workers EXCEPT professional athletes. Generally, all of us are good with them being well paid.

Posted by Concerned in Danville
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 4:39 pm

Dear Conservator,
When it comes to land use, "free market" has its limitations. One such limitation is zoning restrictions. It is zoning that keeps me from turning my house into a 7-Eleven even though that may be a more profitable use. I can sell my house to the highest bidder but their use has to conform to zoning regulations. The only issue being contested here is whether our Town Council is respecting the existing zoning and land use designations or following the law when it comes to making changes. No one is trying to destroy capitalism. Let's try to stick to the issue and not go off on irrelevant tangents.

Posted by Conservator
a resident of Danville
on Mar 7, 2013 at 5:37 pm

@Concerned,

Good points. Perhaps for you to consider, why should one be allowed to take ranch-land and convert it to single-family housing tracks? Is this not a question of zoning as much as it is to consider rezoning those same single-family housing tracks to higher density utilization? Isn't this the issue at hand? Or is there a deeper issue of great concern that only the first transformation (of rural land) was appropriate and that any other consideration is not? I presume that this is closer to 'the issue' as opposed to turning our private residences into 7-Elevens.

Posted by Danville Resident
a resident of Danville
on Mar 8, 2013 at 8:03 am

Wow great comments, but I see this as a freedom and individual rights issue. 5 men were tasked with the project of writing the Delclaration of Independence.
The transgressions and punitive rights restrictions, government control and taxes in the 1700's by Parliment and King George lead to this Delclaration. A short, 1 page document and at the bottom of the 2nd paragraph, "...But when a long train of abuses and usurptions,invariabley the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Goverment, and to provide new Gaurds for their future security..."
We would do well to stop this arguing over PDA's SAP, ONE BAY AREA PLAN,etc, we have a bigger issue here, "THEY" have us arguing over the "LITTLE" stuff while our rights are erroding. We have a plan it is the founding documents, we must do all possible to convince the Town Council to insure our rights.
We are the only country that has been etablished where the founders stripped themselves of the power and gave it to the PEOPLE as a GOD give right of free men...We must excert our rights and power and take our Government back.

Get out of ABAG and any other Bay Area organization that is trying to mandate a uniform system in towns and cities and taking control away from the locals who pay the taxes. Taxation without representation. It smacks of government control of private rights more than any local zoning ordinances would. It is a sneaky way of getting more affordable housing into areas that don't want it or need it really. There is affordable housing available in Danville (Camino Tassajara and downtown). Our local Senator DeSaulnier is a proponent of affordable housing and wrote a bill to make all county developments have 20% affordable housing instead of the current 10%. It was rejected but will come back. Pure and simple it is another spreading the wealth concept. Name calling only distracts from the real issue and that is, government taking more and more control away and ignoring the wishes of the people.

Posted by Conservator
a resident of Danville
on Mar 8, 2013 at 9:34 am

@DR,

You highlight the appropriate focus for all of our intended discussions. I do acknowledge your reference to the Declaration.

While your point as to the greatness of 'the great American experiment' is broadly respected by myself and most all, I would encourage you to do a little book study on a modest historical document (The Magna Carta). Executed in 1215 by King John, brother of Richard the Lionheart, on the fields of Runnymede that document initiated the first transference of power within the Western world from a very exclusive class of people (one) to a group (only a few) just a 'bit' more inclusive. Recalling that was nearly 800 years ago, I suppose we should at least acknowledge those English nobels for challenging the then universal belief in the omnipotence of GOD to grant power only to monarchs and their decedents. This is not a novel thoughts by any stretch. The man who studied this document gave rise to a very 'enlightened' way of thinking which directly influenced those 5 great men in Philadelphia, amongst others, that you rightfully highlighted.

Posted by Danville Resident
a resident of Danville
on Mar 8, 2013 at 1:01 pm

Conservator
Well I was trying to stay a little more currant than the 13th century, I think 200 years is relavant to staying with our beginnings. The government is essentially "telling" us how, and where to live, my point is we have to get out of ABAG, and plan our town for our resident, not the goverment.

Posted by Conservator
a resident of Danville
on Mar 8, 2013 at 2:43 pm

@DR

Come now and give an individual a little credit for acknowledging our English origins as you also cited similar perspectives to substantiate your rally call. It's too tempting to go further with this but I will not.

While I may disagree with your assertions of ABAG being the metaphorical equivalent of an evil scourge bent on stripping us bare of any discernible or useful rights, I would agree that today and eventually tomorrow's generation of home & property owners should be able to guide how this town and valley evolves (i.e. Measure S).